


Too True To Be Good: Time, Death, and Love in Torchwood's "Children of Earth"

by PlaidAdder



Series: Torchwood Meta [4]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, M/M, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am about to talk about some of the things about "Children of Earth" that make it simultaenously very good and really horrible. Top of the list, of course, is Jack/Ianto. Some of that has to do with universals like life, death, and time. But all of that is closely related to the heartbreakingly true, wrenchingly told, and utterly horrifying story that "Children of Earth tells about what is specifically hideous about life in the nation-state in the post 9/11 era. It's going to get long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'VE STILL GOT THAT STOPWATCH

Nobody wants meta about Torchwood. It gets very few notes and posting it has made people unfollow my tumblr faster than just about anything else. Though tethered to one of the great institutions of British television, Torchwood never had what most beancounters would consider a robust viewership, and the longer the show went on the more it had to scramble to survive. There was, of course, a smaller group of committed fans, who loved it for the many things that make it lovable: the wonderful characters, the inventive if uneven stories, the time travel, and of course the way it took so many things people love about fanfic and made them canon. This was clearly self-conscious and deliberate, and I find it enormously endearing. I can't believe it's an accident, for instance, that Torchwood's patented amnesia drug is called "retcon," a term which is short for "retroactive continuity" and which many of us use to describe what it is that we do when we write fix-it fic. Nor is it an accident that apparently everyone who has ever worked for Torchwood is bisexual (with the possible exception of Gwen Cooper) . And of course the best thing about it, for so many of its queer and female fans, would have been the fact that it finally made slash canon. But they were not enough to keep the money rolling in; and even if they had been, there was "Children of Earth."

I started watching Torchwood, quite belatedly, a few weeks ago. After a frustrating experience with "Everything Changes" and "Day One," I asked the Tumblerians whether the show would get better or worse. The answers were contradictory. But the one that I now think best summed it up was: "Worse, then better, then simultaneously better AND worse." At the time I thought this was a Wildean paradox. But in fact, that's how it goes: series 1 gets pretty bad at times ("Cyberwoman," I believe, is just about rock-bottom, though I also have no love for "Countrycide"), series 2 is also uneven, but overall much better; and Children of Earth is, in fact, simultaneously better and worse. From the way other fans complained about it I assumed it was shark-jumping of the last-two-seasons-of-X-Files variety. In fact, it is not. "Children of Earth" is actually very good. And it is also horrible.

So I am about to talk about some of the things about "Children of Earth" that make it both. Top of the list, of course, is Jack/Ianto. Some of that has to do with universals like life, death, and time. But all of that is closely related to the heartbreakingly true, wrenchingly told, and utterly horrifying story that "Children of Earth tells about what is specifically hideous about life in the nation-state in the post 9/11 era. It's going to get long. I think there will be chapters. Here's chapter 1.

**I. I'VE STILL GOT THAT STOPWATCH**

Our first real indication that Jack and Ianto are a Thing comes at the end of "They Keep Killing Suzie." As Jack is standing in the morgue discouraged while Ianto makes out Suzie's death certificate, he says, "One day, we're gonna run out of space." Jack being Jack, this is his way of articulating one of the great tragedies of immortality. Jack collects dead people. His memory is full of them. The Torchwood morgue is just a concrete manifestation of what Jack's long-term memory must be like: hundreds of people that he's met, fucked, worked with, loved, married, had children with...all dead, all stored in their little boxes, never to emerge again.

In the second season of _Doctor Who_ \--the one during which they start preparing the ground for Torchwood--Rose encounters Sarah Jane, and discovers that she wasn't his first companion. The Doctor has a short, sharp conversation with Rose about the fact that he doesn't age, and this means that for him there is no such thing as till death do us part. He tells her quite bluntly that he doesn't like to stick around to see his friends get old and die, and that whether she likes it or not, this companion gig is by nature temporary. Now, Series 2 then goes on to develop the Great Rose/Doctor love; but it's always asymmetrical. Rose is completely committed to it heart and soul; Ten is, at best, ambivalent. He hates losing her; but he hates losing everyone, and by the time he finds her again in "Journey's End," he's moved on. And that's harsh. It's very harsh. But it's realistic, within the terms of the show. The Doctor is from a culture where people don't age, you get (at least) twelve lives, and death is not usually fatal. Mortality is not part of life for his species as it is for humans, and because of that he simply cannot fall in love the way Rose can. (Please know that by acknowledging this I do not intend to absolve RTD for that horrible decision to have Ten hand Rose over to Ten Too at the end of "Journey's End." Maybe he thought that was softening the blow...but for me, it was just grotesque, and I'm not over it.)

Jack is human. Until he got Vortexed in "The Parting of the Ways," Jack assumed that he would live and die just like everyone else around him, except that he would get to travel through time while doing it. So Jack has to grow into his immortality; and it's a difficult, messy, and apparently eternal process. When you think about it, the bravest thing about Jack Harkness is that he still gives a shit about _anyone_ , ever. Any time he meets someone new and feels a little spark, there must be a little voice telling him, "One of these days you'll be watching him die." But he's human, and he's got a heart, and he still needs human relationship, so he still keeps forming them--even if he's often, well, kind of a dick about it. But the knowledge that he will outlive anyone he cares about, that he will go on  _for ever_ outliving people he loves, is always there, hanging over him. 

And then Ianto says, "I've still got that stopwatch." Jack doesn't get it. Ianto says, "Lots of things you can do with a stopwatch." Jack gets that light in his eyes and says, "I'll see you in my office in ten minutes," and runs off like he's a new man.

While Googling this line to make sure I had it right, I found a lot of people expressing bafflement about what Ianto could possibly be referring to. I mean everyone knew it was sexual; but apparently "stopwatch" does not have any self-evident or common coded gay meaning. I also found that "lots of things you can do with a stopwatch" appears to have been quite a popular fiction prompt, as fans tried to figure out how to make a fucking stopwatch erotic.

Here's my theory.

Jack has gotten used to thinking of time in the extreme long term. From that point of view, everything around him seems futile; nothing lasts, not love or hate or anger or even war, and life is just a grave. Jack's had his share of great loves and they've all ended in tragedy, one way or another. He's also had, apparently, thousands upon thousands of casual encounters with all kinds of sentient life, none of which meant anything much to him after they were over.  

What can you do with a stopwatch? You measure the short term. You do it precisely, as if every quarter-second is precious. Whenever someone's reanimated with the Resurrection Glove, there's a stopwatch going to measure how much time the victim has left. In "Everything Changes," after Tosh determines that the murder victim didn't see anything they can use to solve the crime and he's still got thirty seconds left, Suzie calls out, "Don't waste it!" That two and a half minutes is a human life in microcosm: it's so unforgivably short that every second counts. A stopwatch confers importance on the brief period of time that it is used to record.

What can you do with a stopwatch? You can make the short term matter.

That, I believe, is the real source of the pure glee that comes into Jack's expression when he finally takes Ianto's meaning. Ianto's basically telling him: so we lost the hope of immortality that the glove represented. I've still got the stopwatch we used to measure those precious extra two and a half minutes. Yes, I get that from your point of view any relationship we have will seem like it lasted maybe one minute. But it could still be a good minute. I know what I'm signing up for. That's why I kept the stopwatch.

To me this says something very important about who Ianto is and what he means to Jack. Ianto knows that life is short and it doesn't fill him with despair. He, if we are to believe his backstory in "Fragments," is the only member of the team who deliberately and persistently sought Torchwood out. He must, presumably, have done that knowing that they had high turnover and that most Torchwood employees die young. He is all about making the short term matter; and he is grounded enough that way to help Jack play with time instead of being continually tormented by it. When he starts the stopwatch on their ten-minute delay at the end of "They Keep Killing Suzie," he's allowing Jack to experience the pleasure of anticipation, something that a couple millennia have probably pretty much killed for him. I imagine this is mostly what that stopwatch was then used for: to create anticipation, to reintroduce Jack to the pain of longing for something and the joy of getting it. 

So yes. In my headcanon, they share a time kink. And that's one of the things that makes Ianto special. With Ianto, Jack has found something he's probably at this point despaired of looking for: a relationship which is both short-term and meaningful. It's fun without being empty and serious without being tragic. It's exactly what Jack needs. How good it winds up being for Ianto is debatable.

At the beginning of "Children of Earth," Jack and Ianto are still having fun together. But Jack is noticeably annoyed whenever Ianto points out that people are starting to recognize them as a couple, and frankly throughout Day One Jack is really sort of a dick to Ianto. Jack's starting to figure out that Ianto is pretty deeply attached to him, and that he's starting to want a long-term relationship and all the things people usually want with it: stability, commitment, public recognition, a home, and possibly a family. And Jack desperately does not want this relationship to go there, because the long term is what makes him despair. The sad thing is, though, is how much "Children of Earth" shows us that Jack still really wants all those things. We get a hint of this in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," when he and John are telling the team about their backstory. "It was two weeks," Jack says. Hart points out that it was a repeating loop and actually lasted five years. "It was like marriage." Hart, of course, makes a face while he says it; but they were both obviously really into it, though each has to pretend he wasn't by arguing about who was the wife. It's significant, if unflattering, that it's the psychotic killer in this relationship who's man enough to admit that he enjoyed their marriage--"I was a _good_ wife"--whereas our hero is not.

Jack has concealed his desire for permanence like a dark secret, or at least he thinks he has. We learn that he got married at least once in "Something Borrowed." We find out in "Children of Earth" that he's got a family, and that his adult daughter knows exactly who he is and has kept in fairly regular touch with him. His daughter's wariness around him teaches us a lot in a short period of time about what it life could be like for Gwen and Rhys's child. She loves him and is loyal to him; but one senses that she doesn't like him, and that she never trusts him--because all her life, Torchwood has always asked him to put everyone else ahead of his family, and he always does it. His romantic yearning for Gwen is, from my POV, less about wanting her personally than it is about wanting the life that she eventually has at the beginning of "Miracle Day": marriage, a child, and a little house in a safe place where they can all be together and free from the monsters. He sees Gwen, from the very beginning, as a kind of projection of the part of him that wants all those things, and this drives his determination to make sure that she gets them, even at times in her life when it seems like she doesn't want them. The show seems at times to be encouraging us to ship them, but I don't see it; I think he idealizes and romanticizes Gwen precisely because she still wants that domestic life that Jack knows he can't ever really have. That's why he's so into retconning Gwen's wedding, and so pleased to discover that Gwen's pregnant; and that's why, at the end of "Meat," he accepts Gwen's refusal to retcon Rhys. He makes it possible for her to maintain an honest and committed long-term relationship because he wants it _for her,_ not perhaps realizing how much he still wants it for himself. 

All of this, of course, is wrapped up with gender politics. Jack is about as queer as one human being could possibly be; Gwen is the only member of Torchwood who's never voluntarily had sex with someone of the same gender. (In "Everything Changes," even Owen is quite willing to incorporate the woman's boyfriend into their night out "if it'll make it easier.") That scene in "Day One" with the two of them at the scanner telegraphs one of the oldest stories that the patriarchy tells about the difference between a straight woman and a queer man: the straight woman's body brings life, and the queer man's carries death. Of course some of this symbolism has been forced on them from the outside by the assholes who planted the bomb; but some of it is part of the show's fundamental logic, and viewers are right to be a bit pissed off by that. My own POV is that I can see that kind of patriarchal bullshit in nearly any TV show I turn on; I wish it wasn't there, but it doesn't invalidate all the other things that this show does that those other TV shows don't.

Anyway, my point was that Ianto's interest in becoming a 'couple' is obviously a huge problem for Jack, and it's not one that he deals with particularly well. Despite the fact that Ianto saves the team and rescues Jack from a fate worse than death, things with Ianto remain awkward until they have time to discuss the time thing in their new 'headquarters.' Ianto goes through the whole spiel, quite thoughtfully and obviously sadly: you can't die, I surely will, you will go on forever long after I'm gone and be with hundreds of other people after me, many of whom will mean at least as much to you as I do. And then says, well, we better enjoy what we have while we have it. It's a repetition of the stopwatch conversation, but now it's serious instead of playful. And Jack finally recognizes that fundamentally, Ianto's take on time hasn't changed: he wants more from the relationship, but he hasn't forgotten that no matter what they have, it will be temporary; and he hasn't lost his ability to be OK with it. And that makes Jack want to start doing things with that stopwatch again.

So I've watched Ianto's death scene in "Day Four" a couple times now. The first time through, I wasn't really feeling it. I'd been spoiled about it, and on my computer I have a hard time hearing the dialogue when there's a lot of noise in the background. With every rewatch, though, I find it more heartbreaking. Because when it comes to time, Ianto tries to be game to the end. "It was good, yeah?" he says, displaying that old willingness to embrace the short term and to love the brief time they had. But in the end, he reveals that the long term is breaking his heart too: "You'll forget me." He's never really forgotten that for Jack, he can only be one term in a very long series; and underneath it all, part of him has always minded it. 

And Jack is, at least, properly torn up by this, because he's finally realizing how much he's going to lose when he loses Ianto. First time through I was really bothered by the fact that when Ianto says, "I love you," Jack just shakes his head and says "Don't." Could you not, I fumed, give the poor man an 'I love you' on his fucking deathbed, even if it's a lie? But on consideration, I have decided that "Don't" does not mean "don't say that you love me," but "Don't love me." It's a totally futile thing to say, because that boat is already sailing with all sheets to the wind; but it expresses what Jack really wants for Ianto right now, which is for him not to be hurt by the unavoidable asymmetry of their relationship. His immortality prevents him from making an honest return to Ianto's declaration of love; he can't use the word the same way that Ianto does. He promises, instead, the most that he is capable of honestly promising: that he won't forget. "A thousand years?" Ianto asks; and Jack says yes. 

So. From the little I have seen of the Torchwood fandom's internet archive, I believe I can roughly imagine how all this went over. Especially to people who didn't see it coming, Ianto's death must have struck Jack/Ianto fans as deeply hurtful and unforgivable. As shdwslk observed just the other day, "People don't like it when you kill off their ship." And in fact, most showrunners don't treat major characters the way Russell T. Davies treats them, precisely because it makes viewers so VERY angry. The only comparable example I can think of is J. Michael Straczynski and _Babylon 5,_ or Joss Whedon killing off half the cast of _Firefly_ in _Serenity_. There would no doubt have been a corresponding resentment of the fact that Gwen is left alive with her husband and baby so that we can finish up with what the entire heteronormative world recognizes as a happy ending. I can totally see why "Children of Earth" might have made a lot of the show's most fervent fans turn on it. Ianto's death transforms one of the most joy-giving aspects of that show into an instrument of torture for the viewers who have invested in it. And this is why you're never going to see, for instance, Moffat do something like this. Because most people don't want to piss off the base.

I don't hate it. And I guess that's for two reasons. One: I'd already had my heart broken by Donna Noble's exit in "Journey's End." I was really surprised by how much that hurt me, and in fact I have never gone back to watch "Journey's End," ever, because despite it being awesome for about 40 minutes I REALLY HATE the last 10. Compared to what RTD did to her, however, Ianto's death starts to look downright merciful. Donna doesn't die; she has her memories of her entire time with the Doctor wiped, an action to which she makes it clear that she would rather die than submit. The last thing the real Donna remembers is having her best friend invade her mind--without her consent and against her will--and knowing that he's going to burn out her memory of the two best years of her life. He takes a lot of her personality along with it. When you've seen a beloved character _gutted_ that way, death loses a bit of its sting. Unlike Donna, Ianto gets to take all the memories of the two most extraordinary years of his life to the grave. He dies as the person that Torchwood made him, standing up to the ultimate evil. He is quite willing to die if he can take the 456 with him. He gets the closest thing he was ever going to get to a declaration of love. He has a good death. That's the best we can do, in the end, since immortality is not available to us.

Thing two: For me, death is one of the best things about this show. I'm serious. Maybe you have to be over 40 to appreciate this; but one of the things that makes the Torchwood characters as real as they are is that RTD understands the fact that death is one of the things that gives life its meaning. This show is obsessed with death from its very first episode to its last; and why not? Death is one of the great mysteries for which speculative fiction was created. Owen's 'death arc' was, for me, the most affecting thing about series 2, and the kind of thing that you can only do on a show like Torchwood. And we are warned, in "Everything Changes" and fairly often afterward, that coming to work for Torchwood is essentially a death sentence. Gwen signs up for Torchwood knowing that her predecessor basically went mad, started killing people, and shot herself. It was worth it to her. Everyone who comes to work for Torchwood has to make that choice. (Well, everyone except Tosh, who was clearly not really free to reject Jack's offer, which is one of many reasons why I wish they just hadn't made "Fragments.") Of course, on TV, the norm is that despite the fact that they spend their entire lives in mortal peril, the main characters always survive. Torchwood is more like real life. We are warned over and over again that everyone dies; and we're still surprised and angry and heartbroken every time it happens to someone we care about. I mean Owen's killed in "Reset," in a context that makes it look pretty permanent; after all, Martha Jones is right there ready to take his place. Should we really be surprised that he finally actually dies in "Exit Wounds?" No; but we are. And it hurts. Well, so does life.

This is what I mean by too true to be good. The pain you feel over the death of Owen or Tosh or Ianto is not the kind of sentimental dropping of a tear that one feels, for instance, when a character in a Disney film dies. It's more like actual grief. Who likes grief? Fucking no one. But it's part of life, and it's real, and it's what we risk every time we fall in love. It's what makes Torchwood _feel_ more real to me than many another TV series that is less embarrassing in other respects. 

In the end, though, Ianto's death is actually not the hardest thing to take about "Children of Earth." There are a lot of other things in "Children of Earth" that are too true to be good. And in the next installment, we'll start with something Jack says shortly before Ianto dies: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

 

 


	2. AN INJURY TO ONE

Having just started watching series 9 of _Doctor Who_ , I was rather startled to see a young Peter Capaldi suddenly turn up on my screen wearing a suit and bureaucrat glasses. One must admire the man's versatility. My understanding is that most of the roles Capaldi is known for are larger than life. And here he is in "Children of Earth," doing an impeccable job of playing the saddest, smallest, most pathetic little man that ever scurried across the surface of planet Earth.

John Frobisher is not actually the _worst_ human being in "Children of Earth." That honor, I believe, goes to Dekker, the series' other civil servant. He describes himself, Frobisher, and his fellow-civil servants as "the cockroaches of government;" and in the land of roaches, he is king. Dekker isn't just complicit; he seems to genuinely enjoy being at the center of it all, and to find the process of helping an alien species harvest Earth's children stimulating. He never looks happier than when he's persuading other people to do something horrible. Running Dekker a close second, of course, is the Prime Minister. Frobisher lacks the arrogance and self-love required to become that caliber of asshole. He doesn't want to rule; he wants to serve. He wants to be useful, and to earn the gratitude of his superiors. This makes him dangerous; but it also makes him vulnerable to the assholes around him, none of whom give a shit about him apart from Bridget Spears. The little scene in which he thanks the Prime Minister for the confidence he's shown in giving him so much responsibility is just so painful. Despite clear evidence that his superiors see him purely as a tool to be used, Frobisher strives to ignore that for as long as he humanly can, clinging to the idea that his obedience, his diligence, and his willingness to set aside his own conscience and compassion for the sake of the job make him valuable. The horrible fate "Children of Earth" has in store for him is one of the many ways in which RTD underlines one of the dominant messages of "Children of Earth," which is: the more you trust the state, the worse it will fuck you up.

That in itself is nothing new. _Doctor Who,_ on Davies' watch, maintained throughout a deep suspicion of world leaders, governments, and politicians; and that's one of the things that drew me to it. No sympathetic character can survive prolonged service to the state. Poor Harriet Jones, who represents the best that career politicians have to offer us in "World War Three," becomes just another evil politician at the end of "The Christmas Invasion," as she tells Torchwood to blast the retreating alien ship out of the sky--thus poisoning what had up until then been a great emotional high point and an unusually happy ending. I was really pissed off by that. People have pointed out that on DW RTD seems to have a problem with women in power. Well, "Children of Earth" demonstrates what I have always suspected, which is that RTD just hates and fears state power, in general, and the only reason that looks like misogyny in Doctor Who is that RTD went out of his way to cast women in roles that normally go to men. Most of the establishment in "Children of Earth" is male; and to a man, they are awful, awful people.

Here's what's new. Science fiction and fantasy are supposed to be escapist. We're supposed to be able to enjoy being whisked away from the real world into realms of broader possibility. Torchwood certainly is escapist to some extent--I'm certainly using it to escape, right now even--but unlike DW, it is so grounded in the real world that we're never allowed to fully leave it. And perhaps the hardest thing to take about "Children of Earth" is its representation of state power as both intolerable and inescapable. Ianto's death is not just the end of Ianto. It's the end of hope.

So let's talk about the 456.

Without question, the 456 is the best alien they ever created for either Torchwood or Doctor Who. Partly because Doctor Who originally dates from the era before decent special effects, the classic Doctor Who aliens are a pretty silly lot, really. RTD and Moffat both did their best to make the Daleks sinister; but if either of them had dared to seriously interfere with the pepperpot design or the toilet plunger/wringer attachments, they'd have been slaughtered by hordes of angry Classic Who fans. (I assume that the only explanation of the fact that Moffat has not already been slaughtered over his doing away with the sonic screwdriver is that no Classic Who fans are still watching Moffat's Doctor Who.) The Sontarans are equally ridiculous. The whimsicality of the aliens that RTD introduced--the farting Sleveen, for instance--is in keeping with the show's history and also with the Doctor Who ethos, which is largely pro-alien. It's a running joke for both Nine and Ten that their response to meeting a new and sinister alien species is to gasp in wonder and cry out, "You're such a beauty!" The Doctor grooves on the weirdness of the universe, and teaches us to embrace the strange, the ugly, and the intimidating instead of fearing and hating it. 

Torchwood, on the other hand, was originally founded on the premise that what's alien is bad. When Harriet Jones becomes Prime Minister and gets access to Torchwood, she goes from seeing the Doctor as a friend and ally to seeing him as "another alien threat." In "Fragments," Jack--who has probably shagged alien species that earlier Torchwood teams would have shot on sight--is horrified to see one of the Torchwood lesbians summarily execute the blowfish he's arrested for them. But that's what Torchwood was originally created to do: protect the Empire from foreign threats. Despite this, RTD went on making aliens the way he always had on Doctor Who--including a number in which he was clearly aiming for sinister but hit silly. In its first two seasons, Torchwood never really had the aliens that its premise demanded.

Well, RTD made up for all that with the 456. First, he abandoned CGI to go with puppets. Good move, RTD; CGI is cheap and I guess it looks cool but it never feels real. Second, he firmly grasped the concept that what we can't see is scarier than what we can see. The poisonous fog they pump into the tank prevents us from ever getting a good look at the 456--even when they send that poor man in there with the camera--so it remains a nightmare. What we can see of it is a horrid cluster of the most sickening elements of the animal kingdom: slime, beaks, claws, tentacles. Third, the way the 456 speaks is genius. The artificial, dark, sinister voice nevertheless sounds as if it is made by something breathing; and the crude translation devices reduces its language to very basic and very terrifying demands. The 456 doesn't have a lot of emotional range. It's not articulate. It doesn't posture, monologue, rant, or emote. It's not something anyone can really enter into conversation with. It is, in other words, clearly sentient, but also clearly not human. And it's fucking TERRIFYING.

Aliens in science fiction are usually allegorical--sometimes intentionally, sometimes unconsciously. In the bad old days, they were often racist allegories representing the racial Others of a mostly white and male corps of writers--or else misogynistic allegories of what to them was an alien femininity. What's the 456 an allegory for? You can give it whatever name you want based on your own ideology, but whatever name you give it, the 456 is the thing that has captured the 21st century and turned it into a place where there are no longer any good choices. What the 456 does is force people to choose the lesser of two evils. And it also ensures that the lesser evil will always be pretty fucking evil.

The 456's ability to unleash overwhelmingly lethal force at the first sign of disobedience makes effective resistance to it impossible. This was, presumably, recognized back in 1965, when the decision was made to yield to their demands in order to get the antidote to their deadly virus. Jack participated in the state's capitulation on that occasion, and took an active role in delivering the twelve children to their unknown but almost certainly unpleasant fate. It may have been the nastiest piece of evil Torchwood had ever asked him to do, but it certainly wasn't the first; at that point he's been working for Torchwood for over a hundred years, and pretty much it's been evil the whole time. Jack is, at that moment, complying with the logic that created Torchwood: do a little evil, commit a few sins, outrage your own conscience and violate the rights of all creation in order to protect your own state. It's made clear that in 1965, no other countries are affected by or even know about the 456. They're not trying to save the human race by delivering these children; they're trying to save Britain.

In 1965, Jack was undoubtedly telling himself that he was sacrificing a few humans to save a much larger number. When he confronts the adult Clem, whose life has been thoroughly ruined by what Jack put him through, it comes home to him that in fact he was doing something that he knew was foul and wrong because he'd decided that was his job. In that moment, as he surely realizes, he was no different from Frobisher. The shock and horror with which the team reacts to this revelation only ratify how much he loathes himself at that moment. When he asks Ianto what he should have done, Ianto says, "Stand up to them."

Good for you, Ianto! That is clearly the right thing to do. That's what Ianto and Gwen want to do, and that's what Jack's best self, having been reawakened during these last few years of the kinder gentler Torchwood, wants to do. And that's what they go and do. They get Lois to wear the lenses, they record the information, they set up their trap, and then they send Ianto and Jack into Thames House to go stand up to the 456. It's a kick-ass, elating, inspiring sequence that fills us with hope and righteous anger. All it took was a few good people to say fuck no, this is evil, we're marching out to fight it and we will get through _you_ lot, you miserable bunch of self-absorbed petty bureaucrats, because you're weak and you're pathetic, and we have the physical courage and the moral strength to go in and take this thing the fuck down, even if it kills us.

So Jack stands up there and gives the 456 what for. And in the middle of all this, he says that in 1965 he had merely temporarily forgotten something that a wise old friend of his once taught him: that "an injury to one is an injury to all."

At which point, I said, "HOLY SHIT."

Oh, dear readers. Let me explain to you how unbelievably awesome it is that Jack says that line at that moment, and how unutterably awful it makes everything that happens next.

"An injury to one is an injury to all" was the slogan of the International Workers of the World. This was a syndicalist labor union that was established in the US in 1905. Syndicalism was as radical as organized labor ever got. They were out to change the way the world economy worked, and to make the workers more powerful than the owners. The slogan Jack's quoting was a way of encapsulating what made the IWW different from other unions: we're not just fighting for one bunch of people at one workplace, we're not trying to protect the machinists at the expense of the janitors, we are fighting for *all* workers, all the time. If someone's been fired for union activity at a different plant and they're striking over it, we'll come out on strike too. One worker's fight is everyone's fight. If we all work together, we can change the world. We can make life different. We can reject a system which depends on economic inequality, and make a new one based on mutual recognition of each other's dignity and humanity. 

I don't know if I can explain what it was like for me to hear that slogan used as a line of dialogue in a twenty-first century TV show. That line is not just Jack giving out a typically heroic platitude about the virtues of humanity. That is a very specific citation of a very specific utopian vision which was historically attached to a very left-wing strain of socialism. Whether RTD knew that or not--the slogan has, Wikipedia assures me, been adopted since by other causes--Jack is basically telling the 456: fuck you, fuck the state that has abased itself before you, fuck these horrible choices you keep telling us we have to make. Frobisher and his fucking crew may think they have no choice but to accept the options you've given them, but I'm fucking immortal and I remember all the revolutions and I know that there was a time when people believed that another world was possible and they fought for it. I forgot that for a while because I was drawing a paycheck. But I've remembered it now; and because I do, you can't make me do a fucking thing. I know there are other choices that can be made. I'm gonna find out what they are, and when I have, our children will be safe, and you'll be nothing but a pile of slime on the floor of this tank.

It's just everything I've ever wanted to see one of our rotten politicians get up and do. No, we will not choose between cutting the education budget by 25% and cutting it by 50%. That's a false dilemma created by the fact that nobody questions the bullshit we spend the rest of our money on, including wars we never had to fight, and I will find another choice. No, we will not choose between liberty and security. We will choose to treat all human beings with dignity and we will cope with the consequences. No, we will not choose between privatizing Social Security and letting it go bankrupt. We will fund the fucking thing with money we have taken from shit that we don't need and which 99% of Americans don't want, until we have set up a more inclusive program of social welfare which guarantees a right to food, shelter and clothing to EVERYONE. No, we will not accept poverty as the price of prosperity or condemn people to perpetual misery for the crime of being 'unproductive.' We will find a way for what we have to be enough for everyone. Get that competitive-market, zero-sum bullshit away from me. That's just rubbish you made up to keep us from realizing that we have other options. From now on, we're all in this together. From now on, nobody gets left behind.

So go Jack! He's found his inner Wobbly! The courage of his convictions will save us all!

And then everybody dies.

This is what I mean about this being a specifically post-9/11 story. The 456 represents the unchecked power, the unreasonable intolerance, and the casual lethality of the 21st century militarized state. Jack and Ianto, each with their single handgun, can do nothing to stop this hideous creature, which is safe inside the bulletproof enclosure lovingly constructed for it by the British government. The 456, on the other hand, can kill hundreds of people without ever exposing itself to risk. The power balance is so asymmetrical that there is simply no way for direct resistance to work. It's too well protected, too powerful, and too utterly indifferent to the fate of the human race. Because the PM and his crew still care about what people think of them--it is still technically a democracy, after all--Jack and his team can deal with  _them._ But unfortunately the humans are not the problem. What's turning the world into hell is the thing in the tank. The vague, malignant, fog-shrouded thing that sits there brooding in its poisonous atmosphere, enforcing its implacable will on the people we naively thought we were electing to serve _us_. The 456 is the thing that has captured and paralyzed the democratic process to the point where change is impossible and resistance is futile. Invulnerable, insatiable, and completely immoral, it sits there in the center of the fortress demanding to be fed. And because there are no other choices, we feed it.

An injury to one is an injury to all. Absolutely God damn right. And yet, our world has always been arranged in such a way to make it absolutely impossible to live up to this slogan. At various points in history, various people have tried, with varying degrees of success. But in my lifetime, a world in which we are free to act in accordance with this principle has _never_ looked less likely.

What we are witnessing at the end of "Day Four" is not just the death of Ianto Jones. It is the death of the political left, and the dream of a better world that once inspired it. The utopian future dies with Ianto. From here on in, there are no more happy endings.

Jack tells Ianto it's all his fault. Bridget says as much to Lois: "Happy now?" Clearly "standing up to them" was the wrong thing to do. Look at all those people who died. And yet, it is also quite clear that submitting to the 456 is also the wrong thing to do. The number of people who died in Thames House is tiny compared to the number of children who are going to be sucked into living hell by the 456. They can't give in to this. It's hideous. It's unjust. It's unconscionable. We can't live in a world that is run this way. 

This is why RTD takes the risk of evoking unintentional laughter by revealing that the 456 are using these children to get high. Partly, this renders them even more vile by revealing that they do not in any way _need_ the terrible sacrifice they're demanding. But partly it's to remind us that the politics of capitulation are no more effective in the long run than the politics of direct resistance. The 456 are feeding an addiction. Addictions don't remain stable. The fact that the 456 were satsified with 12 children in 1965 and are now demanding millions in 2015 is, from that point of view, a REALLY bad sign. This time they're asking for 10%. Next time they come back it'll be 30%. Eventually, it'll be 100%. This is not a solution. They're not saving humanity by doing this. All they're doing is helping the 456 maintain its supply. No doubt if that thing in the tank wasn't exerting supernatural self-control, they'd all just freebase the entire next generation of humans and then they'd be left with no stash when the withdrawal hit.

So what do we do?

We find other ways to resist. That's what happens on Day Five. But Jack's world on Day Five isn't the world of Day Four any more. Jack's going to save the world; but he's going to do it the same way he did it in 1965. He's going to forget all about how an injury to one is an injury to all, and he's going to sacrifice the few for the sake of the many. 

He's going to take out the 456. He's going to save the world. And it's going to be the worst thing he's ever done.

 

 

 


	3. WHY DO THIS THING WITH THE CHILDREN?

And now we come to the very worst thing that either Jack Harkness or Russell T. Davies has ever done.

To understand why "Children of Earth" ends this way, I think we have to understand why it's about children in the first place. In some ways it's obvious: the fact that the victims of this scheme are children raises the emotional stakes and the ethical problems to an almost unbearable intensity. Adults can volunteer to take one for the team. We don't ask children to do that. It also makes the plot a representation of all the ways in which parliaments of adults routinely fail children. The bureaucrats who make this decision are making the choice to sacrifice the welfare of these children in order to protect their own hides. The 456 are only here for children; adults don't make the "good chemicals." But the virus they use to extort their tribute kills indiscriminately. The deal the government brokers here protects adults and endangers children. Especially poor children. Much like many of the actual decisions made by my own real-life government about housing, education, nutrition, gun regulation, you name it. Much like the way we continue to carry on burning fossil fuels even though we know that the lifestyle to which we are addicted is destroying the world that our children will be trapped in.

But that doesn't explain it all. Specifically, it doesn't explain why Russell T. Davies moved heaven and earth to get Jack into a situation where he feels he is forced to kill his daughter's child--and actually made him do it.

For that, I think we have to go back to that scene with the scanner in Day One, when they find a baby inside Gwen and a bomb inside Jack. And we have to remember that Russell T. Davies is a gay man who was born in 1963.

And you have to understand that when homophobes want to justify hating and persecuting queer people, they always start with children.

Why is homosexuality unnatural? Because it doesn't produce children. Producing children is the natural purpose of sex, after all. Why would you even have sex that can't produce children? Because you're a selfish hedonist (as Alan Keyes once said of Mary Cheney) who cares more about your own fleshly pleasure than about the future of the human race or the welfare of the state, that's why. What kind of adult ARE you that you don't want to raise children? Obviously the kind of frivolous, shallow, irresponsible sexpot who cares for nothing but vanity and pleasure. 

So that's why queer people are bad: we don't care about children. 

On the other hand, if queer people are actually seen to care about children and want to either have them or spend time around them, it can only be because we are predators who intend to seduce and/or convert them to homosexuality. So one way or another, we all get the message somehow: you are harmful to children. Stay away from them. 

We all internalize our own oppression. Detoxing from it is a lifetime project. I know I'm still not done. And if you look at what happens to Jack in "Children of Earth," it's pretty clear that RTD isn't done either.

Jack Harkness's immortality and invulnerability, along with the fact that he's eternally young and supernaturally hot with an inexhaustible libido, make him a kind of hyperbolic parody of the "selfish hedonist" stereotype applied to queer people (sometimes to women, vide Alan Keyes above, but much more often to men). And in fact, when he's introduced in "The Empty Child"--even before he's immortal--he's exactly as irresponsible as queer men are so often prejudged to be. In the process of abusing his time travel powers in order to perpetrate a moneymaking scam, Jack winds up unleashing what appears to be a terrifying and hideous plague in wartime London, whose first symptom is the appearance of an extremely uncanny child-ghost. Encountering the Doctor and Rose triggers a kind of growth spurt for him, and eventually he winds up sacrificing his life to protect them and others from the Dalek hordes. For the rest of his arc, Jack is trying to grow into a sense of responsibility that often seems to be in direct conflict with his personality. This is one of the things that makes him interesting, and the show in general treats his desire to become a responsible adult (despite the fact that nothing can have truly permanent consequences for him) with enormous sympathy. 

But I think there are indications, even before "Children of Earth," that underneath, RTD hasn't let go of that internalized bullshit about queers and children. The most deeply repressed memory of Jack's life, and his greatest source of shame (before Day Five), is of abandoning a child--his younger brother, Gray--and saving himself. John Hart points out that when Gray tells him he's going to be buried alive, possibly until the planet is burned up when the sun expands, Jack doesn't fight it. "It was my penance," Jack says. Despite the fact that Jack didn't intend to abandon Gray, and that at the time that this happened he was only a child himself, he feels such crushing guilt about this that he submits to two millennia of horrible punishment--and RTD not only lets him do it, but has him forgive Gray. 

And I think "Children of Earth" gradually but deliberately reveals Jack as someone who fundamentally does not care about children. And I think the resolution of Day Five is partly about punishing Jack for the irresponsibility with which That Homophobic Voice RTD has in the back of his head taxes all queerkind.

When we finally see what Jack actually did in 1965, the woman who is assigning the mission to him says something very cruel very casually. Jack assumes that he's been chosen for this task because the aliens won't be able to kill him. "They need someone who can't die," he says. The woman corrects him: "They need someone who won't care." Jack has been selected for this mission because his colleagues, in 1965, assume that a man with his 'lifestyle' won't care enough about these twelve children to fuck up the plan at the last minute by trying to save them. That's an unforgivable assumption to make about a queer man. But then Jack essentially confirms their prejudices by walking the children to their 'adventure' with a straight face, showing no signs of emotion as they head toward the light, giving Clem that extra nudge to make sure he gets on board.

Contemporary Jack is clearly, in many ways, a different person. He is all about the _idea_ of children. He loves it that Gwen's pregnant and he seems happy fantasizing about Torchwood itself--which up to this point has been a place of death and trauma--"having a baby." When he confirms that Clem is telling the truth, he's obviously remorseful and ashamed about what he's done. But Jack is a lot more responsive to the pain of the adult Clem than he was to the child Clem. Jack is trying to have a relationship with Alice and Steven; but given that he concealed their existence from the entire Torchwood team, he can't have been spending much time with them. Guilt over those twelve children drives him to try to correct his mistake; but when he realizes that Ianto is going to die, he breaks down completely. "You wanted to fight," says the 456. "I take it all back," Jack cries. We need this as viewers, of course, because we need to know that Jack actually does care about Ianto. But That Homophobic Voice in RTD's head (we all have voices like this; it will hereafter be referred to as THV) is also judging Jack for caring more about his lover than he does about 10% of the world's children. 

But he had no choice, I hear you say. It was the only way to kill the 456.

No, it's not the only way. It's never the only way. That torture-or-ticking-time-bomb scenario is always a lie; that's what the whole "an injury to one is an injury to all" thing was about. When some cockroach like Dekker tells you that you have to either fry the brain of your own grandchild or let millions of children be sucked into a living death in the bowels of alien creatures, the right thing to do is not to choose between those two hideous options. The right thing to do is to reject the logic that creates that dilemma and then find better alternatives. Jack figured that out on Day Four. Why can't he remember it on Day Five?

Partly he's been broken by Ianto's death, and now thinks that he was wrong to look for those alternatives. Partly it's because the government has done something capitalist states are very good at doing: create a crisis which then compels people to make bad decisions. The government blew up Torchwood on Day One; and that's why, instead of having five days, Torchwood's resources, and his whole team to find a way to defeat the 456, Jack's trying to do it alone, in five minutes, in an empty warehouse, with Dekker as his shoulder devil.

So I'm not saying that what happens to Steven is solely Jack's responsibility. It's made quite clear that Jack didn't create this situation. The only man who's punished harder than Jack in this series is Frobisher--because Frobisher is the one who decided to Blank Page Jack, Frobisher was there when they decided to go after the poorest 10% of the children, Frobisher participated and consented at every step of the way. And Frobisher's decision, though it is in a way the bravest thing he's ever done, is also a bad decision--because he has been serving the state for so long that it would not occur to him to resist the state--or if it did, he wouldn't believe he could beat it.

But at the same time...well, try to imagine what would happen if any other member of the original Torchwood team was put in this situation. I'll tell you what would happen:

Tosh: Figures out how to build a transmitter out of coathangers and expired takeout food in 0.45 seconds, saves the day.

Owen: Figures out how to chemically engineer his own dead body so that it can transmit the lethal signal, saves the day.

Ianto: Has noticed something unobtrusive that everyone else has overlooked; low-key points out that this is the key to the whole dilemma, saves the day.

Gwen: May or may not save the day but is DEFINITELY not frying the brain of a child, whether or not she's related to him. 

Jack is the only character on the Torchwood team who is capable of killing a child--slowly and painfully--in order to save the world. And he is the only Torchwood character that RTD would ever have allowed to do it.

And that is because, fundamentally, Jack's 1965 colleagues were right: he doesn't care. At least he doesn't care enough. He can't. He's immortal and invulnerable and that means that just as he can never have a lifetime partner, he can never care as much about any one child as an ordinary parent does. Steven is Alice's only child. Alice is most likely not Jack's only child; Jack undoubtedly has other offspring out there and can go on creating them until the end of time. Parents don't expect to outlive their children; this is one of the reasons why losing a child is so devastating. Jack knows he will outlive all of his. Steven cannot matter as much to Jack as he does to Alice. Even Alice cannot matter as much to Jack as Steven matters to her. 

So the resolution of “Children Of Earth” shows us the ambivalence about children that has always been detectable in Torchwood, and attached to Jack’s character. RTD doesn’t want to let That Homophobic Voice win. After all, Jack has saved  _millions_  of children by doing this. But he also can’t get THV to shut the fuck up. And that’s why Jack can only save the world’s children by killing one of them.

So at last, I have reached the point where I'm going to just throw down the glove and say: this is not OK. And that's because I think this plot was written by That Homophobic Voice. I don't think RTD's being fair here either to Jack or to the viewers or really, in the end, to himself. I think this ending is wrong, in every sense of that word. I wish it didn't exist.

One cannot deny that this ending has a kind of sickening power. But it's not something anyone can enjoy; and it's not something I think anyone's going to be improved by.

After it's all over, and Jack is sitting on that bench alone in the hallway, Alice comes through the double doors. He looks up at her. She has nothing to say to him, and after a moment she walks back through the doors and disappears. Jack sits up straighter and takes a deep breath.

I want to give Barrowman props for that moment. What he does there is a smaller-scale version of the body language he always does to indicate that Jack is coming back to life after his most recent death. It says: Jack died in that warehouse. The life he's had for as long as we've known him is over. He's lost his family; Steven is dead and Alice will never forgive him and she's absolutely right not to. He's lost Torchwood. He's lost Ianto. Gwen's still alive; but her pregnancy is now a reproach to him, a reminder that he is a child-killing monster who should never be allowed to touch anything good. He's going to need a new life, because he just killed the man who made his old one.

**CONCLUSION**

I'm glad I watched "Children of Earth." There's a lot of good in it. I wouldn't give up the first four days. But it is the kind of thing for which there is no encore. I have to believe that RTD was pretty sure when he made it that there would never be any more Torchwood. Jack is destroyed by Day Five, in a way, just as badly as Donna Noble is by the conclusion of "Journey's End." I've seen ep 1 of "Miracle Day;" but I don't feel the way about it that I felt about the first two seasons, even though technically it's a lot better than most of series 1. I can't invest in Jack the same way any more; and although accidentally catching Gwen fighting to save Jack's life in episode 2 of "Miracle Day" was what first drew me to the show, I'm not sure I'll be motivated to go through with it. "Children Of Earth," if nothing else, found a way to do permanent harm to Jack Harkness. It's an achievement of some kind, I suppose.

 

 


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